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High-Quality Care Earns MU Health Care Award From UHC

COLUMBIA, Mo. — University of Missouri Health Care has been ranked among the 12 top performing academic medical centers in the 2014 Quality and Accountability Study for delivering high-quality, safe, efficient, patient-centered and equitable care.

UHC, a Chicago-based alliance of the nation’s leading nonprofit academic medical centers, announced Oct. 23 that MU Health Care has been awarded a 2014 UHC Quality Leadership Award.

“One of MU’s core values is excellence,” said R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the University of Missouri. “This is one more confirmation that we continue to strive for — and achieve — excellence in all we do, including health care.”

“MU Health Care received this national quality award for demonstrated excellence in patient care,” said Mitch Wasden, MU Health Care chief executive officer and chief operating officer. “We’re proud to be recognized for the superior care we provide to our patients.”

The UHC Quality Leadership Award uses a unique and in-depth methodology and ranking system based on data analysis from the annual Quality and Accountability Study, which was designed to help academic medical centers identify structures and processes associated with high performance in quality and safety across a broad spectrum of patient care activity.

“UHC commends these academic medical centers for their strong commitment to providing high-quality patient care throughout their clinical enterprises,” said Irene M. Thompson, UHC’s president and chief executive officer.

The Institute of Medicine’s six domains of care — mortality, effectiveness, safety, equity, patient centeredness and efficiency — were used as a guide in structuring the study. The composite scoring system uses a comprehensive approach to analyzing patient-level data from the UHC Clinical Data Base/Resource Manager™ as well as data from the UHC Core Measures Data Base and the publicly reported Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

“As evidenced by their performance on the measures in the Quality and Accountability Study, these organizations exhibit the fundamental characteristics — shared sense of purpose, successful leadership style, accountability mechanisms, focus on results and collaboration — of top-performing academic medical centers,” Thompson said.

This year, UHC’s award methodology was refined with enhanced measures related to safety, including data on hospital-acquired infections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network and new metrics on venous thromboembolism based on the Joint Commission’s National Quality Core Measures. For more information, visit www.uhc.edu.